October 3, 2023 • 46 mins
Episode 4 of 8
Beth examines the Hardy murder file in order to fully understand the investigation. She discovers a pattern of tunnel vision, willful disbelief of alibi witnesses, and a reliance on coercive interview tactics that suggest if witnesses don’t say what the police want them to say, they will end up as defendants and charged with crimes themselves. Beth considers other potential investigative leads that were ignored and lost to time while detectives constructed a narrative that suited their fixation on securing a prosecution for this high-profile crime.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Last time on ear witness, I.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Believe I got a phone call from someone in the
room saying they heard gunshots.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Boom, small caliber gun.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
They want a big caliber boom.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
About the second time myself I've been with them.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
That was a gun. When you got a deafinite share
of killed over here. It's high profile and people are
expecting things out here.
Speaker 6 (00:38):
Tavarra Johnson, I remember he was pushing a Drinka's four
in the wheelchair. They came together.
Speaker 7 (00:44):
I had saw too far.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Was pushing Adrika's in the club.
Speaker 7 (00:49):
Me and one of my girlfriends they named Latanya, me
and hiring two. Two guys are supposed to hook up
that night.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
One is twenty one.
Speaker 7 (01:01):
They called him Dre.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
He's in a wheelchair.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Not only do you want somebody in custody. The captain
is stelling in the Liew town we need to get
this done. The sheriff is stelling the captain, we need
to get this done.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
I think he's taking hand how of the and we
went there?
Speaker 8 (01:20):
So what she's saying she was there and I was there.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's a life, that's a lot.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
That's a shame.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
When police come looking for our dregas Ford, his mom
calls Richard Jeffy, who had helped them in the past.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Ar Dregas was in a wheelchair, as you know, and
his mother brought him over to the lions Den to
the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Jeffy's a trial lawyer, and he looks like one, but
not in a slick way. He's slender in a rumpled
suit with gray hair and glasses. The day Ardregas went
to the Sheriff's office for questioning, Jaffy is just beginning
a trial in a different case, but before he goes
to court that day, he gets a phone call from
(02:19):
the Sheriff's office.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I was called by a Deputy Blanton and he said
I heard that you were representing Ardregas Ford and I went, yes,
I was just contacted by the family, but I don't
know anything about the case. And he said, well, look,
he's just a witness. I mean, he just knows stuff.
And I knew Deputy Blanton, and I believed if he
(02:41):
had information involving a police shooting, I wanted to help,
and Ardregus did too, and against my best judgment, I
allowed Ardragas to be interviewed by him and several other
(03:03):
Jefferson County detectives.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So our Dregas is questioned alone while his attorney, Jaffe,
heads to the courthouse.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Perhaps around four thirty or five when we broke, I
found out that Ardregas was still there, so he'd been
there all day, like maybe nine hours, and I was
extremely distraught, so I hurried over there. It was just
across the street, and when I got into the very
(03:35):
large room, it was buzzing with detectives and police officers,
and you could feel the tension was it was enormous
amount of.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Tension there in the crowd of police officers and detectives.
Jaffe notices Jefferson County's district attorney, a man named David Barber.
He's in charge of all state prosecutions in Alabama's law
Urgest jurisdiction and is working with police in the Deputy
Hardy murder investigation. When Jeffie sees Barber, he walks over
(04:09):
to him.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And I said, what's going on with our Dragas? And
David said, well, we know he was there and he's
not telling us the truth, so we're going to charge him.
He can either be a witness or a defendant. I said, well,
what are you saying, and he said, just that witness
are defendant. It's his choice.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
The choice detectives are giving our dragis either he gives
them information about Hardy's murder or he'll be charged with
a crime.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
If I had any idea that they thought he was there,
I nor any lawyer would allow their client in any case,
especially we're a deaf pinety case, to be interviewed by
law enforcement. They just wouldn't allow it. Frankly, I felt
a little inept and a little foolish, as well as
(05:04):
a little deceived. And I said, well, what can I
do to help? And he said, we'll go in there
and get him to tell the truth. And I said, well,
then you're going to have to give him immunity.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
According to Jeffy, David Barber offers ar Dregas immunity from
prosecution in exchange for naming to Forrest as the shooter.
Jeffe says Barber hand writes the immunity agreement on a
piece of paper and gives it to him.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
David's word was good with me. And I walked into
a little office where Ardregas was in his wheelchair sitting there.
Didn't look happy, certainly, wasn't happy with me at all.
And I said, what's going on? And he said they
were screaming at me, and they made me tell the
story over and over and over again, and even tell
(05:51):
it backwards. And I said, well, this is an immunity agreement.
Maybe we should talk about it. And he reads it
and he's said, so they want me to lie. He said, look,
mister Jaffy, I wasn't there, and I've got a dozen
or more alibi witnesses that will testify to that I
(06:13):
know nothing about it. Zero. I said, okay, well they
think that you're not a shooter, but you were there,
and they think to Forrest is the shooter. And he
looked at me and he said, listen, I'm not going
to lie for anybody. To Forrest and I are close,
(06:33):
but we're not that close. He's not family. I would
happy to give to Forrest up in a heartbeat, except
it would be a lie. And I'm not going to lie.
That never happens, even on a theft case, even on
a possession of marijuana case, even on a hubcap case.
Everybody flips sadly enough to save themselves. Yeah, he said,
(06:57):
no way, not gonna lie. I said, all right, Well,
they're going to take you to jail. They're going to
wheel you to jail, and they're going to charge you
with capital murder, which is death penalty offense. And he goes,
I wasn't there. Tell him to take me to jail,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
The next day, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office announces formal
charges in the murder of Deputy Bill Hardy.
Speaker 9 (07:28):
Charged with capital murder of a law enforcement officer our
twenty two year old tor Forrest Johnson, twenty one year
old are Dragis Ford, twenty three year old Oman Berry,
and twenty one year old Quinn tes Wilson. They are
held without bond.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
All four people charged with capital murder are young black men.
Based on the changing stories of Yolanda Chambers, detectives believe
at least six people were in the parking lot behind
the hotel when Hardy was shot and Latanya to Forrest
and Ardregis and the two other people Yolanda identified in photos,
(08:07):
Omar Barry and Quintez Wilson. The headline and the Birmingham
News reads police confident they got right men and deputy
slaying sounds like an open and shut investigation, but pull
back the curtain or in this case, open up the
investigative file, and the inner workings tell a different story.
(08:35):
I'm Beth Shelburne. This is ear witness. Chapter four. Witness
or defendant the tactic the state uses with our Dregas,
(09:13):
telling him he can either be a witness or a defendant.
Detective Tony Richardson repeats it over and over during Deputy
Hardy's murder investigation.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
You are in a position now to be one of
two things. Okay.
Speaker 10 (09:28):
You can either be a witness or you can be
a defendant.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
You know, you can either be a witness or you
can be a dependent. Can only be either a witness
or you can be a defendant. Okay. It's your choice.
You make it. You tell me what you want to do.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
One of the people Tony Richardson uses this tactic on
is Yolanda Chamber's friend Latanya Henderson, who was in the
car with DeForest Ardregas and Yolanda the night Deputy Hardy
was killed.
Speaker 10 (09:59):
Natanya, I am working a homicide, okay, and in working
this homicide, people have choices. It's choice whether you want
to be a witness or you want to.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Be a defendant.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Latanya is sixteen years old. She's in high school and
lives with her mother and brother, and as she's questioned
about the night of the murder, she's alone in the
room with detectives, no lawyer, no parent present.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
I'm not saying anything to entice you to say something.
Speaker 10 (10:31):
You tell me what's the truth, and tell and you
tell me that's the truth, and I'm gonna take it
like that.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
But I do want you to.
Speaker 10 (10:36):
Know that some people are going to be witnesses, some
are going to be defendants.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Defendant's going to jail.
Speaker 11 (10:41):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Now, After giving Latania this choice, Detective Richardson asks her
where she was that night.
Speaker 10 (10:49):
Were you at Neil or around at hotel when this
officer was shot?
Speaker 5 (10:54):
No, sir, okay, and you've never been there before. No,
I haven't care.
Speaker 10 (11:00):
And you have no independent knowledge of what happened to
this office.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
No, I haven't.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Despite being told she's a suspect and a murder, Latania
does not change her story, but she also doesn't seem
to understand the rules of the game detectives are playing.
She asks Detective Richardson to explain that's a.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Question, and is defendent as someone is charged with the crime. Well, no, no, no,
I'm a non defendant. No, all right, so you want.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
To be Latanya has to ask what it means to
be a defendant, then says she doesn't want to be
charged with the crime. At one point, Richardson stops the
tape like he's done in Yolanda's interviews, and restarts it
after a five minute break.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
You know where the Crown starney isn't? Would you know
it if you saw it? No? I have never seen it.
I have never been.
Speaker 10 (11:55):
Were you in any hotel parking lot that night where
shots were back? No?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Okay, it's sort of Tony rich and justin kind of Shayshaw.
As the time, it's three fifty pm. This is going
to conclude this interview.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
In a lot of the interviews that you did in
this case, you and Sergeant Salter presented a choice. You
can be a witness or you can be a defendant.
Tell me about presenting that to somebody that you're interviewing.
That seems like a lot of pressure to put on someone.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, at certain times you have to put pressure on somebody.
That's just a that's just a strategy. That's that's just
an investigative too. That's that's nothing. So I look at
you and I say, look, you can either be a witness.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Or you can be a defendant. It's up to you.
And that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What if the person is neither a witness nor a
defendant in the case.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Though, well, sometimes you say that trying to determine if
they're a witness or defendant, you know, particularly if you
don't know, and if they continue to maintain I know nothing,
at some point I'm gonna say, Okay, I got you.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
But for Latania, there was never an okay, I got
you from investigators. Even though she explains she doesn't know
anything about the crime, detectives follow through with their threat
and make her a defendant. One month after Tony Richardson
(13:33):
questions Latania, the state charges her with hindering prosecution in Alabama.
That's a felony at sixteen years old. Police take Latania
Henderson to adult jail, where she stays for five months.
Speaker 12 (13:52):
Yo, Latania Henderson, I mean even if she had been there, Yeah,
even if Yolanda's story was true, what she had defendant on,
you know, what has she done?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
This is Derek Drennan, a lawyer who worked with Richard
Jaffy in representing Ardregis.
Speaker 12 (14:11):
Ford, and I don't know. I think they charged with
hindering prosecution, maybe because because basically she wasn't telling the
lies that Yolanda was telling.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
A few years later, Latania says that she was hysterical
when they took her to jail, desperate to get detectives
to believe her. She says that she suffered from stress
and lost too much weight. I really wanted to talk
to Latania to hear how this experience shaped her, and
(14:51):
we tried for months to track her down, knocking on doors,
calling possible numbers, combing social media, but we never could connect.
I was able to talk to her uncle, Herman Henderson,
a pastor in Birmingham. He told me Latania and Yolanda
had been friends since they were babies, but this case
(15:13):
ended their friendship and Latanya was scarred by the entire experience.
Her trust in other people eroded. Yolanda Chambers and Latania
Henderson made different choices when faced with threats from police.
There's a damned if you do, damned if you don't
(15:33):
dynamic and how they were each impacted. Yolanda became a
witness for detectives avoiding jail time during Hardy's murder investigation,
but entered a pattern of exploitation that may have led
to her murder. Latania became a defendant for telling the truth,
(15:56):
she didn't have any information to give, and detectives her
to jail. Both Yolanda and Latanya ended up traumatized and hurt.
And as I think through how detectives treated these witnesses
and the suspects of Harty's murder, I keep coming back
(16:18):
to this one thing that Tony Richardson said, The best.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Thing that a person probably can do for themselves that's
suspected of a crime is do not talk to thebout
these period.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Now that's really interesting coming from a retired detective, but
that's the truth. Detectives are moving ahead with the theory
(17:03):
of the crime that Yolanda Chambers gives them and her interrogations,
even though the theory isn't supported by what hotel witnesses
saw and heard the night of the murder. So what
were detectives missing, what evidence was available, and was there
anything else they should have looked at but didn't because
(17:24):
they decided to stick with Yolanda as their key witness
let's back up to the moment Hardy was shot. We
know officers began their investigation by talking to hotel guests,
actual confirmed witnesses who were staying at the Crown Sterling Suites.
Several people heard the shots and looked out their window
(17:47):
right after it happened, like Marshall, Kelly Cummings. The Keebler
Cookie Guy.
Speaker 13 (17:54):
Fallen is an interview with mister Marshall, Kelly Cummings, What
Collins is, and Paul Kedler.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
This interview was recorded about two and a half hours
after Hardy was shot. Cummings says he saw someone get
into a car and drive away from the hotel right
after he heard the shots fired.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Immediately seen the same A shot wrung at I pulled
the cartain back and looked out and that's when I
saw the car down below me.
Speaker 11 (18:23):
I saw the.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
A person.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Cummings says he saw the person close the driver's side door.
Speaker 5 (18:33):
I looked at closing winch door the driver shot.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
He saw a copper colored or light brown car with
a vinyl top slowly back out of the parking spot
and drive away with the headlights off.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Did you think it was a dark copper or light.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Brond, Yes, sir, And there was another witness in a
different hotel room who also looked out his window after
he heard the shots.
Speaker 13 (19:01):
Ir, we heard a shot, so I jumped up. I
justly in the doorged my head out.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
The night of the murder, Leon Calvin was staying in
room six ' eleven with his wife Annie. The two
of them were in bed. He was watching TV and
she was reading the newspaper. They heard the first shot
and Leon told Annie he thought it was a car backfiring.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
You heard a shot. Bang? Tell me how long after
this it bang? Bang? Okay, so just I'll second or
so yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
After the second shot, Calvin went to the window to
see what was going on.
Speaker 13 (19:42):
Seeing the car down by the bag of the motel,
he walked up beside, came round in front of.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
The car, and got in the car.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Calvin's description of the car and what the car did
is it left the parking lot matches the details given
by Marshall Comming.
Speaker 13 (20:02):
I told him he was there was a dog collored gold,
all brown with a kind of maroon looking top with
a sun roping.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Both Cummings and Calvin say the car was a four
door brown, gold or copper sedan with a maroon top.
That's so specific. They both say it was the only
car leaving the parking lot right after shots were fired.
(20:32):
What these witnesses saw doesn't match the theory of the murder.
Detectives go with.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
Moni Golo.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Ardregis describes his car to detectives the day he's arrested.
He was driving a two door black nineteen seventy one
Monte Carlo we'll call Blo, and he had installed flow
Master mufflers, so it made a loud, rumbling sound.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
I got like flow mass on my cost. Uh you
got these floor masters loud? Okay?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
People could hear Ardregas's car coming from blocks away to
Forest tells detectives that when they picked up Latanya, they
actually waited for her in an alley because they didn't
want to wake up the entire house. But Colvin and
Cummings say that the light brown or copper colored car
(21:28):
quietly drove out of the parking lot, and there's an
even bigger discrepancy.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
Not don o, I'll drive a door ome.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
The driver's side door on Ardregas's very loud black Monte
Carlo was broken. It did not open ar Dregis and
to Forrest tell this to detectives.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
Dreda do moo o at doo del the driver domo.
Speaker 11 (21:57):
O In all.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Investigation impounded are Dregus's car and confirmed the driver's side
door didn't open. Detective Tony Richardson would later testify to this,
but both Calvin and Cummings say that someone got in
the driver's side of the car and quietly drove away
(22:19):
same name.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
He walked from the patam's side round in front of
the car to the draw side the Gadian.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
There were other guests at the hotel who spotted cars
leaving the area around this time, but their descriptions were
all different. The only consistent descriptions of the getaway car
came from Cummings and Calvin, two people who went to
their hotel room windows after hearing shots and looked down
(22:50):
into the parking lot. The investigative file shows that police
tried to find the car see by Calvin and Cummings,
but Tony Richardson would eventually tell a grand jury the
search was a wild goose chase and that the car
didn't exist. And there's something even more significant about this.
(23:19):
Other hotel witness, Leon Calvin. He gives police a basic
description of the man. He saw five foot ten, medium
build who got into the car and drove away.
Speaker 13 (23:32):
Yeah, a black and white driver shirt and it looked
like he had count Bade.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Catchy of summer.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Calvin describes the man as wearing a black and white
shirt and khaki or cream pants. This is the only
physical description given of a potential suspect, but detectives decide
that Calvin isn't a witness, he's a As I dig deeper,
(24:03):
I learned that Detective Tony Richardson and Leon Calvin are cousins,
and in the first week of the investigation, Richardson decides
that Colvin is hiding something.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
We have talked with several we have talked to have
have indicated that you do know more.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Calvin gives detectives multiple statements about what he heard and saw,
and Tony Richardson interrogates him for hours about his movements
inside the hotel the night of the murder, insisting that
Calvin was involved.
Speaker 10 (24:39):
If you tell us one thing and it's not accurate,
if we know that you know different, and you can
be charged with the crime.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
Okay, just show you a note.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Tony Richardson shows Yolanda chambers four photos of possible suspects.
Yolanda picks out the photo of Leon Colvin and says
he was involved in the alleged drug deal behind the
hotel when Hardy was killed.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Loud of that line upset you were standing right then
when the man was shot.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Leon Colvin is charged with hindering prosecution and taken to jail.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Well, my mo, I ain't did did him?
Speaker 13 (25:21):
I ain't did none?
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I did him? I did did him?
Speaker 11 (25:25):
I did him?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Police press ahead with Ardregis into forrest as two of
their main suspects, even though there is no record of
any hotel witness describing a loud two door black Bonnie
Carlo leaving the scene or a man in a wheelchair.
(26:00):
There's another clue in the file that jumps out at me.
A police report from a day after the murder states
that a hotel worker named Jerry McDaniel told detectives that
he saw Deputy Hardy arguing with the group of young
black men who had been running around inside the hotel,
especially the sixth floor. There's even a description of one
(26:23):
of these young men, six feet tall, slim, wearing a
dark baggy basketball jersey with the number thirty three on it.
When I first read this, I was like, WHOA what?
This information seems super relevant. Hardy was arguing with a
group of people just hours before he was murdered. Jerry
(26:47):
McDaniel would later testify in court that he saw Hardy
having this loud argument with the group of young men
around ten pm, and that he saw Hardy again before
he left for the night around a lete thirty. McDaniel
said Hardy was standing at the back door of the hotel,
propping it open with his foot. He also spotted the
(27:10):
same group of young men outside in the back parking
lot as he left work to go home. He said
that after the confrontation, Hardy seemed mad, saying I ain't
never seen him like that before. But detectives never identified
the young men and later say their interview with Jerry
(27:31):
McDaniel never led to any more evidence. I want to
pursue this. If Jerry McDaniel is still around, maybe he
can give us some new information about those last hours
of Hardy's life, something about the young men he saw
arguing with Hardy, some new nugget to breathe life into
(27:53):
this case. Are you I'm looking for mister Jerry McDaniel.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Is that you.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Jerry McDaniel is retired in his seventies and lives in
a small green shake Shingle bungalow, the same house he's
lived in his entire adult life. We talk on his
porch and he remembers Hardy's murder conversation with anybody.
Speaker 8 (28:21):
Yeah, coase, I'm moving around, so I see everything. I've
become totaled asn and stuff. You know, there's been a
lot of stuff going on that hotel.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Dogs.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
McDaniel also remembers seeing Hardy argue with the group of
young men inside the hotel. I mean, did it seem
like Deputy Hardy knew those people?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (28:43):
You might have known him causeie something he he wanted
something they had or something they didn't give him, something
I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
And about an hour and a half later, when he
ended his shift and left the building, he passed by
Hardy who was standing at the hotel's back door. Do
you remember like exactly what you saw?
Speaker 8 (29:05):
Yeah, he was standing at the back door. Back there
could have to have right, and and it was a car.
I then when I left, you know, read there read
the back by what a dark.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Bed, But that's pretty much all he remembers. Had police
aggressively pursued this lead, they might have gotten somewhere. But now,
decades later, McDaniel can no longer recall any other specific
details about the car or anything else from that night.
(29:39):
Whatever he saw, whoever those young men were, that potential
big lead has faded, likely impossible to recover. After reading
(30:10):
through hundreds of pages of reports, There's a question that
still sticks with me. Why did Deputy Hardy leave the
hotel atrium where he was drinking coffee and smoking a
cigarette to go out the back door to the parking
lot without his radio and then.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Ug every hour on the hour or so or every
hour and a half, he would do a drive around
the premises to check out the perimeter of the hotel.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
According to Barry Rushikov, the hotel desk clerk, Hardy's routine
was to walk around inside the hotel when he was
making his rounds, but when he checked around the outside
of the hotel, he usually drove around the property in
his car. Right after the CRME, the sheriff tells reporters
(31:02):
that Deputy Hardy may have been investigating something suspicious, maybe
a drug deal. But if Hardy went outside to check
something behind the hotel, why would he leave his two
way radio on the table inside. Barry talked to detectives
just five hours after the murder. He told them about
(31:24):
how weird this detail seemed to him.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
Tell me what she thought was unusual about him? Not
him the wall, to.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Tell me, Officer Hardy, if he got out, he always
put the radio in his back pocket, and if he
was smoking, he never would leave us a cigarette.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Really, he would always walk around with it. For him
to have left both the radio.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And a cigarette was extremely unlike him, completely unlike him.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Hardy had over two decades of experience as a law
enforcement officer. Leaving his radio behind seems out of character,
and he also left his cigarette burning. Is it possible
that he was expecting to go outside quickly, maybe to
meet someone, and that's why he left them behind. Is
(32:11):
it possible that Hardy knew his killer? I tried to
look into this. There is a file containing records of
the calls that police received from the special tip line
set up for the case, and I found eight different tips,
urging detectives to look into Hardy's personal life. These tips
(32:34):
suggest that someone Hardy knew might be connected to his murder.
I asked Detective Tony Richardson about this, Is there anything
that you recall y'all investigating as far as that goes.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I don't recall that or recall us investigating anything. I'll
say right now that I wouldn't have. I mean, I'm
investigating the police officers iss dead. He's been shot and killed.
It don't matter what you know he did. If somebody
walked up to him and shot.
Speaker 11 (33:10):
Him like that.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
My producer Marra presses him, like.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
The first thing to me, if I hear that somebody
has killed, I would look at their life for a
motive instead of assuming that it was random.
Speaker 11 (33:22):
Is that not where you would start?
Speaker 5 (33:29):
You know?
Speaker 3 (33:30):
I can explain like this, when Hardy was shot, he
was in uniform, working a part time security job, still
a serves deputy, now doing his job, and he was
shot and killed.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
Okay, if he had been at home.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
In his pajamas, shot and keell.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
In bed, we would have looked at him, because that's
what you do.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Because Deputy Hardy was a police officer and was killed
in uniform, not in his own bed, wearing pajamas. Detective
Richardson says he wouldn't have looked into people that knew Hardy. Instead,
Richardson repeats the theory that Hardy walked up on a
drug deal that he wasn't supposed to see and that's
(34:35):
why he was killed. An insider that I talked to,
a retired bailiff who worked in Jefferson County when Deputy
Hardy was murdered, told me that this theory about a
police officer interrupting a drug deal, it's like a default
explanation when detectives don't have any idea what happened. The
(35:01):
sheriff first mentioned the scenario hours after the murder, and
the media ran with it. The only eventual evidence to
support this theory the always changing statements from Yolanda Chambers.
(35:39):
Detectives not only missed potential promising leads, they also ignored
facts that could have ruled out to Forrest Johnson and
ardregas Ford as suspects. Some of the people who were
with to Forrest and ardregas at Tea's place remember learning
about their arrests from the media coverage week after the murder.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
When I read it in the paper, I sighed to
Forest name and I was like, well, how did he
do it? We was at Tease that you know that night.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Can Yarra Pickett was at Teas at the same time
Deputy Hardy was killed. She was out celebrating with her sister, Dedre,
who had just recovered from surgery, and to Forrest gave
her name to police.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Keen. It was a female at Gallard Keen Ian.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Keen, you're a man, you had k He told them
to find a girl named Ken that he was hanging
out with at Teas, but they never called or knocked
on her door.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
I never went to the police or anything because I
was on the age at the time.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, I mean that, how old were you?
Speaker 11 (36:44):
I think I was twenty.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
It was ninety five twenty in April.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yes, So did they not check id's at the club
or did y'all have fake IDs?
Speaker 5 (36:53):
He had a fake ID.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
So that made you not want to go to police
because you didn't want to go We're supposed to be there.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, I didn't want to go to.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
The Kenyara was scared that she would end up in
jail if she went to police.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
I saw on the news that.
Speaker 6 (37:09):
Tafara Johnson had been picked up for that murder of
Officer HARDI I said, wait a minute, there's no way,
I said, I saw to.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Fire's Stanley Chandler is another person who saw to Forrest
and Ardregis at Tea's place at the time Deputy Hardy
was murdered. Stanley is a US Marine and he was
also hesitant to get involved.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
You know, you're twenty five.
Speaker 6 (37:33):
I just cannot walk and down to count of jail
say hey, I saw that guy at the club that
night at that time. You know, so no one never
contacted the man. So I felt like if Fire needed
me that someone would reach out. I had no knowledge
of what to do.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Are Dregas and to Forrest told police about multiple people
they were with at Tease, the bartender who remade a
weak drink, the guy who sold to Forest a hot
dog outside the club, and the girls they chatted with
in the parking lot. To Forrest also gave Tony Richardson
the names and phone numbers of friends he remembered seeing
(38:13):
inside the club.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
One feed man name is Queasy word.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Queasy including Queisi and Mama Cat.
Speaker 5 (38:21):
Okay.
Speaker 11 (38:22):
One feed man name is Mama Cat.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
And number seven eighty five Forest right okay Son.
Speaker 5 (38:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
The Forest couldn't give us any names other than nicknames
or maybe a first name.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
There was no way that we could find a witness.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
But we sat and we waited, hoping that you know
who don't know that the Forest is in jail for
this crime, maybe they'll come forward. Not a single one
nobody came forward to say, hey, you got the wrong guy.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
He was he was at the club.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Not a single person came forward to say to Forrest
was at Tea's place the night of the murder. After
Tony Richardson tells me this, I look through the investigative
file to double check.
Speaker 11 (39:14):
It's Sergeant Tony Richardson, just kind of Sheriff's office. I
am on the phone with bar Betta and that spelled
b R b E Tta Hunt, also known as Mama Cat.
Do you remember where Taforis Johnson was on the night
of July to eighteenth or the morning of July to nineteenth, Yes,
(39:36):
I too, Okay, can you tell me where?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Right there in the folder of recorded police interviews, I
find that Detective Richardson did talk with an alibi witness
he called Mama Cat about a month after the murder.
Speaker 7 (39:51):
Well I saw him at Teas place.
Speaker 11 (39:54):
You saw him at Tea's place. Yes, that's with my
friend of Velanique Sanders, Belanique Sanders, Yes, sir, okay, all right,
I am on the phone with Bello Nique Sanders. Felaanick
is also known as Queasy and her home phone numbers
seven eighty.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
On the same day, Detective Richardson talked to Velaanique, also
known as Queasy. She told him she sow to Forrest
and Ardregas inside Tees between eleven PM and one thirty. AM.
Speaker 11 (40:23):
Okay, all right. Is there any particular reason that you
remember the time that they got there, any time that
they left.
Speaker 7 (40:29):
Yes, the time that they got there, my friend by
bell behind, her beeper had went out, and I remember
her telling me what time it was.
Speaker 11 (40:38):
Okay, what about the time they left?
Speaker 7 (40:42):
The time they left, my beep went out? Okay, my
sister was paying me to tell me to come home.
Uh huh, that's why I remember the time.
Speaker 11 (40:51):
Okay, all right now.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
I interviewed Tony Richardson twenty seven years after this investigation.
I guess it's possible that he just doesn't remember speaking
with Mama Cat and Quisi. So after I found these
phone calls. I went back to ask him about it.
There were alibi witnesses on the record that told y'all
(41:14):
I saw them at Tea's place. Now, whatever went into
not believing them is not in any files that we've
been able to access.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, since I don't know who this witness was, I
can't remember them. I can't remember what they said. Uh,
I can't really tell you if I believe them or not.
Probably not, Probably not.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
But cops have a lot of discretion as far as
that goes, right in believing alibi witnesses or not believing
alibi witnesses.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Well, you have.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I mean, you can believe or disbelieve anybody. But if
someone tells you something that either you need check out
your check further or tells you something that could possibly
have happened, you have an obligation to either prove or
disprove that.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
You have that obligation.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
But speaking with Mama Cat and Quisi, hearing them corroborate
to Forrest and Ardregis's alibi, it wasn't enough for detectives
to question their own theory of the crime. The pressure
(42:46):
to put someone on trial for killing Deputy Hardy isn't
letting up. But fifteen months after the crime, the judge
dismisses capital murder charges against two of their main suspects,
Omar Berry and Quintez Wilson. Yolanda Chambers changes her story
to say they weren't involved in the murder. They also
(43:10):
have alibis and police believe them, so detectives let them
go to Forrest and Ardregas are now the only two
suspects charged with Deputy Hardy's murder, but Wright is detective
zero in on Ar Dregas, and to Forest, they run
into a big problem. Two weeks after, she says Omar
(43:32):
Berry and Quintez Wilson have nothing to do with the crime.
Yolanda Chambers pivots and says under oath that she's made
up the entire story about the murder. She recants all
of her testimony, now saying to Forrest and Ardregas also
had nothing to do with the murder.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Evidence wise, we didn't have bersually well, we had persually
no evide.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
We had the word of a fifteen year old who
told lies a lot of lies. I lie out lie, outlie.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
We had this table empty, wasn't nothing on it, and
we were still trying to try that case, and we
were like, man, what we gonna do, How We're gonna
win this?
Speaker 1 (44:24):
But investigators have someone else, someone they hadn't initially believed,
someone who will become the state's new star witness against
to Forrest Johnson.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Bally us walking that door, standing up on this table
and say what she said.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
We got a full table. Now we got all the
evidence we need.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
That's next time. Ear Witness is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts association with Signal Company Number One. Executive
producers are Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardis, and me
Beth Shelburn. The investigative reporting for this series was done
(45:13):
by Me and MARAA McNamara. Producers are MARAA McNamara, Hannah
Bial and Jackie Polly. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.
Brit Spangler is our sound designer. Additional story editing from
Marie Sutton, fact check help from Catherine Newhan, and special
(45:34):
thanks to to Forrest Johnson's legal defense team. You can
follow the show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter at
Lava for Good to see behind the scenes content from
our investigation visit Lava for goood dot com, slash ear
witness
Last time on ear witness, I.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Believe I got a phone call from someone in the
room saying they heard gunshots.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Boom, small caliber gun.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
They want a big caliber boom.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
About the second time myself I've been with them.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
That was a gun. When you got a deafinite share
of killed over here. It's high profile and people are
expecting things out here.
Speaker 6 (00:38):
Tavarra Johnson, I remember he was pushing a Drinka's four
in the wheelchair. They came together.
Speaker 7 (00:44):
I had saw too far.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Was pushing Adrika's in the club.
Speaker 7 (00:49):
Me and one of my girlfriends they named Latanya, me
and hiring two. Two guys are supposed to hook up
that night.
Speaker 5 (00:59):
One is twenty one.
Speaker 7 (01:01):
They called him Dre.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
He's in a wheelchair.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Not only do you want somebody in custody. The captain
is stelling in the Liew town we need to get
this done. The sheriff is stelling the captain, we need
to get this done.
Speaker 7 (01:13):
I think he's taking hand how of the and we
went there?
Speaker 8 (01:20):
So what she's saying she was there and I was there.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's a life, that's a lot.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
That's a shame.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
When police come looking for our dregas Ford, his mom
calls Richard Jeffy, who had helped them in the past.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Ar Dregas was in a wheelchair, as you know, and
his mother brought him over to the lions Den to
the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Jeffy's a trial lawyer, and he looks like one, but
not in a slick way. He's slender in a rumpled
suit with gray hair and glasses. The day Ardregas went
to the Sheriff's office for questioning, Jaffy is just beginning
a trial in a different case, but before he goes
to court that day, he gets a phone call from
(02:19):
the Sheriff's office.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I was called by a Deputy Blanton and he said
I heard that you were representing Ardregas Ford and I went, yes,
I was just contacted by the family, but I don't
know anything about the case. And he said, well, look,
he's just a witness. I mean, he just knows stuff.
And I knew Deputy Blanton, and I believed if he
(02:41):
had information involving a police shooting, I wanted to help,
and Ardregus did too, and against my best judgment, I
allowed Ardragas to be interviewed by him and several other
(03:03):
Jefferson County detectives.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So our Dregas is questioned alone while his attorney, Jaffe,
heads to the courthouse.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Perhaps around four thirty or five when we broke, I
found out that Ardregas was still there, so he'd been
there all day, like maybe nine hours, and I was
extremely distraught, so I hurried over there. It was just
across the street, and when I got into the very
(03:35):
large room, it was buzzing with detectives and police officers,
and you could feel the tension was it was enormous
amount of.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Tension there in the crowd of police officers and detectives.
Jaffe notices Jefferson County's district attorney, a man named David Barber.
He's in charge of all state prosecutions in Alabama's law
Urgest jurisdiction and is working with police in the Deputy
Hardy murder investigation. When Jeffie sees Barber, he walks over
(04:09):
to him.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
And I said, what's going on with our Dragas? And
David said, well, we know he was there and he's
not telling us the truth, so we're going to charge him.
He can either be a witness or a defendant. I said, well,
what are you saying, and he said, just that witness
are defendant. It's his choice.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
The choice detectives are giving our dragis either he gives
them information about Hardy's murder or he'll be charged with
a crime.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
If I had any idea that they thought he was there,
I nor any lawyer would allow their client in any case,
especially we're a deaf pinety case, to be interviewed by
law enforcement. They just wouldn't allow it. Frankly, I felt
a little inept and a little foolish, as well as
(05:04):
a little deceived. And I said, well, what can I
do to help? And he said, we'll go in there
and get him to tell the truth. And I said, well,
then you're going to have to give him immunity.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
According to Jeffy, David Barber offers ar Dregas immunity from
prosecution in exchange for naming to Forrest as the shooter.
Jeffe says Barber hand writes the immunity agreement on a
piece of paper and gives it to him.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
David's word was good with me. And I walked into
a little office where Ardregas was in his wheelchair sitting there.
Didn't look happy, certainly, wasn't happy with me at all.
And I said, what's going on? And he said they
were screaming at me, and they made me tell the
story over and over and over again, and even tell
(05:51):
it backwards. And I said, well, this is an immunity agreement.
Maybe we should talk about it. And he reads it
and he's said, so they want me to lie. He said, look,
mister Jaffy, I wasn't there, and I've got a dozen
or more alibi witnesses that will testify to that I
(06:13):
know nothing about it. Zero. I said, okay, well they
think that you're not a shooter, but you were there,
and they think to Forrest is the shooter. And he
looked at me and he said, listen, I'm not going
to lie for anybody. To Forrest and I are close,
(06:33):
but we're not that close. He's not family. I would
happy to give to Forrest up in a heartbeat, except
it would be a lie. And I'm not going to lie.
That never happens, even on a theft case, even on
a possession of marijuana case, even on a hubcap case.
Everybody flips sadly enough to save themselves. Yeah, he said,
(06:57):
no way, not gonna lie. I said, all right, Well,
they're going to take you to jail. They're going to
wheel you to jail, and they're going to charge you
with capital murder, which is death penalty offense. And he goes,
I wasn't there. Tell him to take me to jail,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
The next day, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office announces formal
charges in the murder of Deputy Bill Hardy.
Speaker 9 (07:28):
Charged with capital murder of a law enforcement officer our
twenty two year old tor Forrest Johnson, twenty one year
old are Dragis Ford, twenty three year old Oman Berry,
and twenty one year old Quinn tes Wilson. They are
held without bond.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
All four people charged with capital murder are young black men.
Based on the changing stories of Yolanda Chambers, detectives believe
at least six people were in the parking lot behind
the hotel when Hardy was shot and Latanya to Forrest
and Ardregis and the two other people Yolanda identified in photos,
(08:07):
Omar Barry and Quintez Wilson. The headline and the Birmingham
News reads police confident they got right men and deputy
slaying sounds like an open and shut investigation, but pull
back the curtain or in this case, open up the
investigative file, and the inner workings tell a different story.
(08:35):
I'm Beth Shelburne. This is ear witness. Chapter four. Witness
or defendant the tactic the state uses with our Dregas,
(09:13):
telling him he can either be a witness or a defendant.
Detective Tony Richardson repeats it over and over during Deputy
Hardy's murder investigation.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
You are in a position now to be one of
two things. Okay.
Speaker 10 (09:28):
You can either be a witness or you can be
a defendant.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
You know, you can either be a witness or you
can be a dependent. Can only be either a witness
or you can be a defendant. Okay. It's your choice.
You make it. You tell me what you want to do.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
One of the people Tony Richardson uses this tactic on
is Yolanda Chamber's friend Latanya Henderson, who was in the
car with DeForest Ardregas and Yolanda the night Deputy Hardy
was killed.
Speaker 10 (09:59):
Natanya, I am working a homicide, okay, and in working
this homicide, people have choices. It's choice whether you want
to be a witness or you want to.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Be a defendant.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Latanya is sixteen years old. She's in high school and
lives with her mother and brother, and as she's questioned
about the night of the murder, she's alone in the
room with detectives, no lawyer, no parent present.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
I'm not saying anything to entice you to say something.
Speaker 10 (10:31):
You tell me what's the truth, and tell and you
tell me that's the truth, and I'm gonna take it
like that.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
But I do want you to.
Speaker 10 (10:36):
Know that some people are going to be witnesses, some
are going to be defendants.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Defendant's going to jail.
Speaker 11 (10:41):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Now, After giving Latania this choice, Detective Richardson asks her
where she was that night.
Speaker 10 (10:49):
Were you at Neil or around at hotel when this
officer was shot?
Speaker 5 (10:54):
No, sir, okay, and you've never been there before. No,
I haven't care.
Speaker 10 (11:00):
And you have no independent knowledge of what happened to
this office.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
No, I haven't.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Despite being told she's a suspect and a murder, Latania
does not change her story, but she also doesn't seem
to understand the rules of the game detectives are playing.
She asks Detective Richardson to explain that's a.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Question, and is defendent as someone is charged with the crime. Well, no, no, no,
I'm a non defendant. No, all right, so you want.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
To be Latanya has to ask what it means to
be a defendant, then says she doesn't want to be
charged with the crime. At one point, Richardson stops the
tape like he's done in Yolanda's interviews, and restarts it
after a five minute break.
Speaker 5 (11:49):
You know where the Crown starney isn't? Would you know
it if you saw it? No? I have never seen it.
I have never been.
Speaker 10 (11:55):
Were you in any hotel parking lot that night where
shots were back? No?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Okay, it's sort of Tony rich and justin kind of Shayshaw.
As the time, it's three fifty pm. This is going
to conclude this interview.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
In a lot of the interviews that you did in
this case, you and Sergeant Salter presented a choice. You
can be a witness or you can be a defendant.
Tell me about presenting that to somebody that you're interviewing.
That seems like a lot of pressure to put on someone.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, at certain times you have to put pressure on somebody.
That's just a that's just a strategy. That's that's just
an investigative too. That's that's nothing. So I look at
you and I say, look, you can either be a witness.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Or you can be a defendant. It's up to you.
And that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
What if the person is neither a witness nor a
defendant in the case.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Though, well, sometimes you say that trying to determine if
they're a witness or defendant, you know, particularly if you
don't know, and if they continue to maintain I know nothing,
at some point I'm gonna say, Okay, I got you.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
But for Latania, there was never an okay, I got
you from investigators. Even though she explains she doesn't know
anything about the crime, detectives follow through with their threat
and make her a defendant. One month after Tony Richardson
(13:33):
questions Latania, the state charges her with hindering prosecution in Alabama.
That's a felony at sixteen years old. Police take Latania
Henderson to adult jail, where she stays for five months.
Speaker 12 (13:52):
Yo, Latania Henderson, I mean even if she had been there, Yeah,
even if Yolanda's story was true, what she had defendant on,
you know, what has she done?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
This is Derek Drennan, a lawyer who worked with Richard
Jaffy in representing Ardregis.
Speaker 12 (14:11):
Ford, and I don't know. I think they charged with
hindering prosecution, maybe because because basically she wasn't telling the
lies that Yolanda was telling.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
A few years later, Latania says that she was hysterical
when they took her to jail, desperate to get detectives
to believe her. She says that she suffered from stress
and lost too much weight. I really wanted to talk
to Latania to hear how this experience shaped her, and
(14:51):
we tried for months to track her down, knocking on doors,
calling possible numbers, combing social media, but we never could connect.
I was able to talk to her uncle, Herman Henderson,
a pastor in Birmingham. He told me Latania and Yolanda
had been friends since they were babies, but this case
(15:13):
ended their friendship and Latanya was scarred by the entire experience.
Her trust in other people eroded. Yolanda Chambers and Latania
Henderson made different choices when faced with threats from police.
There's a damned if you do, damned if you don't
(15:33):
dynamic and how they were each impacted. Yolanda became a
witness for detectives avoiding jail time during Hardy's murder investigation,
but entered a pattern of exploitation that may have led
to her murder. Latania became a defendant for telling the truth,
(15:56):
she didn't have any information to give, and detectives her
to jail. Both Yolanda and Latanya ended up traumatized and hurt.
And as I think through how detectives treated these witnesses
and the suspects of Harty's murder, I keep coming back
(16:18):
to this one thing that Tony Richardson said, The best.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Thing that a person probably can do for themselves that's
suspected of a crime is do not talk to thebout
these period.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Now that's really interesting coming from a retired detective, but
that's the truth. Detectives are moving ahead with the theory
(17:03):
of the crime that Yolanda Chambers gives them and her interrogations,
even though the theory isn't supported by what hotel witnesses
saw and heard the night of the murder. So what
were detectives missing, what evidence was available, and was there
anything else they should have looked at but didn't because
(17:24):
they decided to stick with Yolanda as their key witness
let's back up to the moment Hardy was shot. We
know officers began their investigation by talking to hotel guests,
actual confirmed witnesses who were staying at the Crown Sterling Suites.
Several people heard the shots and looked out their window
(17:47):
right after it happened, like Marshall, Kelly Cummings. The Keebler
Cookie Guy.
Speaker 13 (17:54):
Fallen is an interview with mister Marshall, Kelly Cummings, What
Collins is, and Paul Kedler.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
This interview was recorded about two and a half hours
after Hardy was shot. Cummings says he saw someone get
into a car and drive away from the hotel right
after he heard the shots fired.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Immediately seen the same A shot wrung at I pulled
the cartain back and looked out and that's when I
saw the car down below me.
Speaker 11 (18:23):
I saw the.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
A person.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Cummings says he saw the person close the driver's side door.
Speaker 5 (18:33):
I looked at closing winch door the driver shot.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
He saw a copper colored or light brown car with
a vinyl top slowly back out of the parking spot
and drive away with the headlights off.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
Did you think it was a dark copper or light.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Brond, Yes, sir, And there was another witness in a
different hotel room who also looked out his window after
he heard the shots.
Speaker 13 (19:01):
Ir, we heard a shot, so I jumped up. I
justly in the doorged my head out.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
The night of the murder, Leon Calvin was staying in
room six ' eleven with his wife Annie. The two
of them were in bed. He was watching TV and
she was reading the newspaper. They heard the first shot
and Leon told Annie he thought it was a car backfiring.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
You heard a shot. Bang? Tell me how long after
this it bang? Bang? Okay, so just I'll second or
so yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
After the second shot, Calvin went to the window to
see what was going on.
Speaker 13 (19:42):
Seeing the car down by the bag of the motel,
he walked up beside, came round in front of.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
The car, and got in the car.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Calvin's description of the car and what the car did
is it left the parking lot matches the details given
by Marshall Comming.
Speaker 13 (20:02):
I told him he was there was a dog collored gold,
all brown with a kind of maroon looking top with
a sun roping.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Both Cummings and Calvin say the car was a four
door brown, gold or copper sedan with a maroon top.
That's so specific. They both say it was the only
car leaving the parking lot right after shots were fired.
(20:32):
What these witnesses saw doesn't match the theory of the murder.
Detectives go with.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
Moni Golo.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Ardregis describes his car to detectives the day he's arrested.
He was driving a two door black nineteen seventy one
Monte Carlo we'll call Blo, and he had installed flow
Master mufflers, so it made a loud, rumbling sound.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
I got like flow mass on my cost. Uh you
got these floor masters loud? Okay?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
People could hear Ardregas's car coming from blocks away to
Forest tells detectives that when they picked up Latanya, they
actually waited for her in an alley because they didn't
want to wake up the entire house. But Colvin and
Cummings say that the light brown or copper colored car
(21:28):
quietly drove out of the parking lot, and there's an
even bigger discrepancy.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
Not don o, I'll drive a door ome.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
The driver's side door on Ardregas's very loud black Monte
Carlo was broken. It did not open ar Dregis and
to Forrest tell this to detectives.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
Dreda do moo o at doo del the driver domo.
Speaker 11 (21:57):
O In all.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Investigation impounded are Dregus's car and confirmed the driver's side
door didn't open. Detective Tony Richardson would later testify to this,
but both Calvin and Cummings say that someone got in
the driver's side of the car and quietly drove away
(22:19):
same name.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
He walked from the patam's side round in front of
the car to the draw side the Gadian.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
There were other guests at the hotel who spotted cars
leaving the area around this time, but their descriptions were
all different. The only consistent descriptions of the getaway car
came from Cummings and Calvin, two people who went to
their hotel room windows after hearing shots and looked down
(22:50):
into the parking lot. The investigative file shows that police
tried to find the car see by Calvin and Cummings,
but Tony Richardson would eventually tell a grand jury the
search was a wild goose chase and that the car
didn't exist. And there's something even more significant about this.
(23:19):
Other hotel witness, Leon Calvin. He gives police a basic
description of the man. He saw five foot ten, medium
build who got into the car and drove away.
Speaker 13 (23:32):
Yeah, a black and white driver shirt and it looked
like he had count Bade.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Catchy of summer.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Calvin describes the man as wearing a black and white
shirt and khaki or cream pants. This is the only
physical description given of a potential suspect, but detectives decide
that Calvin isn't a witness, he's a As I dig deeper,
(24:03):
I learned that Detective Tony Richardson and Leon Calvin are cousins,
and in the first week of the investigation, Richardson decides
that Colvin is hiding something.
Speaker 5 (24:15):
We have talked with several we have talked to have
have indicated that you do know more.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Calvin gives detectives multiple statements about what he heard and saw,
and Tony Richardson interrogates him for hours about his movements
inside the hotel the night of the murder, insisting that
Calvin was involved.
Speaker 10 (24:39):
If you tell us one thing and it's not accurate,
if we know that you know different, and you can
be charged with the crime.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
Okay, just show you a note.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Tony Richardson shows Yolanda chambers four photos of possible suspects.
Yolanda picks out the photo of Leon Colvin and says
he was involved in the alleged drug deal behind the
hotel when Hardy was killed.
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Loud of that line upset you were standing right then
when the man was shot.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Leon Colvin is charged with hindering prosecution and taken to jail.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Well, my mo, I ain't did did him?
Speaker 13 (25:21):
I ain't did none?
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I did him? I did did him?
Speaker 11 (25:25):
I did him?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Police press ahead with Ardregis into forrest as two of
their main suspects, even though there is no record of
any hotel witness describing a loud two door black Bonnie
Carlo leaving the scene or a man in a wheelchair.
(26:00):
There's another clue in the file that jumps out at me.
A police report from a day after the murder states
that a hotel worker named Jerry McDaniel told detectives that
he saw Deputy Hardy arguing with the group of young
black men who had been running around inside the hotel,
especially the sixth floor. There's even a description of one
(26:23):
of these young men, six feet tall, slim, wearing a
dark baggy basketball jersey with the number thirty three on it.
When I first read this, I was like, WHOA what?
This information seems super relevant. Hardy was arguing with a
group of people just hours before he was murdered. Jerry
(26:47):
McDaniel would later testify in court that he saw Hardy
having this loud argument with the group of young men
around ten pm, and that he saw Hardy again before
he left for the night around a lete thirty. McDaniel
said Hardy was standing at the back door of the hotel,
propping it open with his foot. He also spotted the
(27:10):
same group of young men outside in the back parking
lot as he left work to go home. He said
that after the confrontation, Hardy seemed mad, saying I ain't
never seen him like that before. But detectives never identified
the young men and later say their interview with Jerry
(27:31):
McDaniel never led to any more evidence. I want to
pursue this. If Jerry McDaniel is still around, maybe he
can give us some new information about those last hours
of Hardy's life, something about the young men he saw
arguing with Hardy, some new nugget to breathe life into
(27:53):
this case. Are you I'm looking for mister Jerry McDaniel.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Is that you.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Jerry McDaniel is retired in his seventies and lives in
a small green shake Shingle bungalow, the same house he's
lived in his entire adult life. We talk on his
porch and he remembers Hardy's murder conversation with anybody.
Speaker 8 (28:21):
Yeah, coase, I'm moving around, so I see everything. I've
become totaled asn and stuff. You know, there's been a
lot of stuff going on that hotel.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Dogs.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
McDaniel also remembers seeing Hardy argue with the group of
young men inside the hotel. I mean, did it seem
like Deputy Hardy knew those people?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (28:43):
You might have known him causeie something he he wanted
something they had or something they didn't give him, something
I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
And about an hour and a half later, when he
ended his shift and left the building, he passed by
Hardy who was standing at the hotel's back door. Do
you remember like exactly what you saw?
Speaker 8 (29:05):
Yeah, he was standing at the back door. Back there
could have to have right, and and it was a car.
I then when I left, you know, read there read
the back by what a dark.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Bed, But that's pretty much all he remembers. Had police
aggressively pursued this lead, they might have gotten somewhere. But now,
decades later, McDaniel can no longer recall any other specific
details about the car or anything else from that night.
(29:39):
Whatever he saw, whoever those young men were, that potential
big lead has faded, likely impossible to recover. After reading
(30:10):
through hundreds of pages of reports, There's a question that
still sticks with me. Why did Deputy Hardy leave the
hotel atrium where he was drinking coffee and smoking a
cigarette to go out the back door to the parking
lot without his radio and then.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Ug every hour on the hour or so or every
hour and a half, he would do a drive around
the premises to check out the perimeter of the hotel.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
According to Barry Rushikov, the hotel desk clerk, Hardy's routine
was to walk around inside the hotel when he was
making his rounds, but when he checked around the outside
of the hotel, he usually drove around the property in
his car. Right after the CRME, the sheriff tells reporters
(31:02):
that Deputy Hardy may have been investigating something suspicious, maybe
a drug deal. But if Hardy went outside to check
something behind the hotel, why would he leave his two
way radio on the table inside. Barry talked to detectives
just five hours after the murder. He told them about
(31:24):
how weird this detail seemed to him.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
Tell me what she thought was unusual about him? Not
him the wall, to.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Tell me, Officer Hardy, if he got out, he always
put the radio in his back pocket, and if he
was smoking, he never would leave us a cigarette.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Really, he would always walk around with it. For him
to have left both the radio.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And a cigarette was extremely unlike him, completely unlike him.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Hardy had over two decades of experience as a law
enforcement officer. Leaving his radio behind seems out of character,
and he also left his cigarette burning. Is it possible
that he was expecting to go outside quickly, maybe to
meet someone, and that's why he left them behind. Is
(32:11):
it possible that Hardy knew his killer? I tried to
look into this. There is a file containing records of
the calls that police received from the special tip line
set up for the case, and I found eight different tips,
urging detectives to look into Hardy's personal life. These tips
(32:34):
suggest that someone Hardy knew might be connected to his murder.
I asked Detective Tony Richardson about this, Is there anything
that you recall y'all investigating as far as that goes.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I don't recall that or recall us investigating anything. I'll
say right now that I wouldn't have. I mean, I'm
investigating the police officers iss dead. He's been shot and killed.
It don't matter what you know he did. If somebody
walked up to him and shot.
Speaker 11 (33:10):
Him like that.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
My producer Marra presses him, like.
Speaker 10 (33:15):
The first thing to me, if I hear that somebody
has killed, I would look at their life for a
motive instead of assuming that it was random.
Speaker 11 (33:22):
Is that not where you would start?
Speaker 5 (33:29):
You know?
Speaker 3 (33:30):
I can explain like this, when Hardy was shot, he
was in uniform, working a part time security job, still
a serves deputy, now doing his job, and he was
shot and killed.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
Okay, if he had been at home.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
In his pajamas, shot and keell.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
In bed, we would have looked at him, because that's
what you do.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Because Deputy Hardy was a police officer and was killed
in uniform, not in his own bed, wearing pajamas. Detective
Richardson says he wouldn't have looked into people that knew Hardy. Instead,
Richardson repeats the theory that Hardy walked up on a
drug deal that he wasn't supposed to see and that's
(34:35):
why he was killed. An insider that I talked to,
a retired bailiff who worked in Jefferson County when Deputy
Hardy was murdered, told me that this theory about a
police officer interrupting a drug deal, it's like a default
explanation when detectives don't have any idea what happened. The
(35:01):
sheriff first mentioned the scenario hours after the murder, and
the media ran with it. The only eventual evidence to
support this theory the always changing statements from Yolanda Chambers.
(35:39):
Detectives not only missed potential promising leads, they also ignored
facts that could have ruled out to Forrest Johnson and
ardregas Ford as suspects. Some of the people who were
with to Forrest and ardregas at Tea's place remember learning
about their arrests from the media coverage week after the murder.
Speaker 5 (36:02):
When I read it in the paper, I sighed to
Forest name and I was like, well, how did he
do it? We was at Tease that you know that night.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Can Yarra Pickett was at Teas at the same time
Deputy Hardy was killed. She was out celebrating with her sister, Dedre,
who had just recovered from surgery, and to Forrest gave
her name to police.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Keen. It was a female at Gallard Keen Ian.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Keen, you're a man, you had k He told them
to find a girl named Ken that he was hanging
out with at Teas, but they never called or knocked
on her door.
Speaker 5 (36:38):
I never went to the police or anything because I
was on the age at the time.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, I mean that, how old were you?
Speaker 11 (36:44):
I think I was twenty.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
It was ninety five twenty in April.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yes, So did they not check id's at the club
or did y'all have fake IDs?
Speaker 5 (36:53):
He had a fake ID.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
So that made you not want to go to police
because you didn't want to go We're supposed to be there.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yeah, I didn't want to go to.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
The Kenyara was scared that she would end up in
jail if she went to police.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
I saw on the news that.
Speaker 6 (37:09):
Tafara Johnson had been picked up for that murder of
Officer HARDI I said, wait a minute, there's no way,
I said, I saw to.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Fire's Stanley Chandler is another person who saw to Forrest
and Ardregis at Tea's place at the time Deputy Hardy
was murdered. Stanley is a US Marine and he was
also hesitant to get involved.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
You know, you're twenty five.
Speaker 6 (37:33):
I just cannot walk and down to count of jail
say hey, I saw that guy at the club that
night at that time. You know, so no one never
contacted the man. So I felt like if Fire needed
me that someone would reach out. I had no knowledge
of what to do.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Are Dregas and to Forrest told police about multiple people
they were with at Tease, the bartender who remade a
weak drink, the guy who sold to Forest a hot
dog outside the club, and the girls they chatted with
in the parking lot. To Forrest also gave Tony Richardson
the names and phone numbers of friends he remembered seeing
(38:13):
inside the club.
Speaker 4 (38:15):
One feed man name is Queasy word.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Queasy including Queisi and Mama Cat.
Speaker 5 (38:21):
Okay.
Speaker 11 (38:22):
One feed man name is Mama Cat.
Speaker 8 (38:25):
And number seven eighty five Forest right okay Son.
Speaker 5 (38:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
The Forest couldn't give us any names other than nicknames
or maybe a first name.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
There was no way that we could find a witness.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
But we sat and we waited, hoping that you know
who don't know that the Forest is in jail for
this crime, maybe they'll come forward. Not a single one
nobody came forward to say, hey, you got the wrong guy.
Speaker 5 (38:58):
He was he was at the club.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Not a single person came forward to say to Forrest
was at Tea's place the night of the murder. After
Tony Richardson tells me this, I look through the investigative
file to double check.
Speaker 11 (39:14):
It's Sergeant Tony Richardson, just kind of Sheriff's office. I
am on the phone with bar Betta and that spelled
b R b E Tta Hunt, also known as Mama Cat.
Do you remember where Taforis Johnson was on the night
of July to eighteenth or the morning of July to nineteenth, Yes,
(39:36):
I too, Okay, can you tell me where?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Right there in the folder of recorded police interviews, I
find that Detective Richardson did talk with an alibi witness
he called Mama Cat about a month after the murder.
Speaker 7 (39:51):
Well I saw him at Teas place.
Speaker 11 (39:54):
You saw him at Tea's place. Yes, that's with my
friend of Velanique Sanders, Belanique Sanders, Yes, sir, okay, all right,
I am on the phone with Bello Nique Sanders. Felaanick
is also known as Queasy and her home phone numbers
seven eighty.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
On the same day, Detective Richardson talked to Velaanique, also
known as Queasy. She told him she sow to Forrest
and Ardregas inside Tees between eleven PM and one thirty. AM.
Speaker 11 (40:23):
Okay, all right. Is there any particular reason that you
remember the time that they got there, any time that
they left.
Speaker 7 (40:29):
Yes, the time that they got there, my friend by
bell behind, her beeper had went out, and I remember
her telling me what time it was.
Speaker 11 (40:38):
Okay, what about the time they left?
Speaker 7 (40:42):
The time they left, my beep went out? Okay, my
sister was paying me to tell me to come home.
Uh huh, that's why I remember the time.
Speaker 11 (40:51):
Okay, all right now.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
I interviewed Tony Richardson twenty seven years after this investigation.
I guess it's possible that he just doesn't remember speaking
with Mama Cat and Quisi. So after I found these
phone calls. I went back to ask him about it.
There were alibi witnesses on the record that told y'all
(41:14):
I saw them at Tea's place. Now, whatever went into
not believing them is not in any files that we've
been able to access.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, since I don't know who this witness was, I
can't remember them. I can't remember what they said. Uh,
I can't really tell you if I believe them or not.
Probably not, Probably not.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
But cops have a lot of discretion as far as
that goes, right in believing alibi witnesses or not believing
alibi witnesses.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
Well, you have.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
I mean, you can believe or disbelieve anybody. But if
someone tells you something that either you need check out
your check further or tells you something that could possibly
have happened, you have an obligation to either prove or
disprove that.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
You have that obligation.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
But speaking with Mama Cat and Quisi, hearing them corroborate
to Forrest and Ardregis's alibi, it wasn't enough for detectives
to question their own theory of the crime. The pressure
(42:46):
to put someone on trial for killing Deputy Hardy isn't
letting up. But fifteen months after the crime, the judge
dismisses capital murder charges against two of their main suspects,
Omar Berry and Quintez Wilson. Yolanda Chambers changes her story
to say they weren't involved in the murder. They also
(43:10):
have alibis and police believe them, so detectives let them
go to Forrest and Ardregas are now the only two
suspects charged with Deputy Hardy's murder, but Wright is detective
zero in on Ar Dregas, and to Forest, they run
into a big problem. Two weeks after, she says Omar
(43:32):
Berry and Quintez Wilson have nothing to do with the crime.
Yolanda Chambers pivots and says under oath that she's made
up the entire story about the murder. She recants all
of her testimony, now saying to Forrest and Ardregas also
had nothing to do with the murder.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Evidence wise, we didn't have bersually well, we had persually
no evide.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
We had the word of a fifteen year old who
told lies a lot of lies. I lie out lie, outlie.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
We had this table empty, wasn't nothing on it, and
we were still trying to try that case, and we
were like, man, what we gonna do, How We're gonna
win this?
Speaker 1 (44:24):
But investigators have someone else, someone they hadn't initially believed,
someone who will become the state's new star witness against
to Forrest Johnson.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Bally us walking that door, standing up on this table
and say what she said.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
We got a full table. Now we got all the
evidence we need.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
That's next time. Ear Witness is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts association with Signal Company Number One. Executive
producers are Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wardis, and me
Beth Shelburn. The investigative reporting for this series was done
(45:13):
by Me and MARAA McNamara. Producers are MARAA McNamara, Hannah
Bial and Jackie Polly. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer.
Brit Spangler is our sound designer. Additional story editing from
Marie Sutton, fact check help from Catherine Newhan, and special
(45:34):
thanks to to Forrest Johnson's legal defense team. You can
follow the show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter at
Lava for Good to see behind the scenes content from
our investigation visit Lava for goood dot com, slash ear
witness
Host
Beth Shelburne
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